Broken Transmission
by Saramis Kismet
Summary: On a class trip to Canada, the class's bus is thrown so far off the road, they can't make it back in the harsh weather they're left in. For the next three days, the class has to fend off the mischevious spirit that put them in isolation. The biggest probl
1. Crash

**Broken Transmission**

_I know what you people are going to say. Why's Saramis doing challenges when she has two stories that she hasn't updated in eternirty? Answers can be found at this forum thingy that I found out today that we could make: __http/ I find that cool. This is from a challenge ofBran Muffinat DPO, so if it's been done before forgive me. I've never done one of these before._

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**Crash**

Tucker stretched his arms out over his head and leaned back into his seat. "Man, I can't wait until we get to that resort," he said dreamily.

"Well, we've been waiting for eight hours," growled Sam from the seat behind him, "and we'll be waiting for another four hours still. I guess you're going to have to wait." She leaned forward and placed her chin on the space between Tucker and Danny's seats. "Can someone please tell me why on earth we decided to go to a mountain ski resort for our class trip?"

Danny shrugged, hearing Sam's complaints faintly from beyond his mp3 player's earphones. "I don't know. I wanted to fly to Houston to go to NASA, but that wasn't even one of the choices we were given." He glared bitterly at the screen and punched the touch pad violently. Sam and Tucker stared with wide eyes at Danny's obvious frustration, but decided to ignore it.

"It was either this or Washington D.C.," Tucker said. "I think most people would rather ski than visit a bunch of museums."

"And no one seems to consider that maybe Sam hates the cold and wants to visit the place MLK gave his "I Have A Dream" speech, huh?"

"No," replied the two boys in the seat in front of her.

Sam rolled her eyes and leaned back into her own chair. "Figures." She pulled in her large black coat tighter around her body and leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the bus window. At least their class had rented a charter bus. The only downside to that was that they were playing some romantic comedy on the televisions, and she could hear Paullina's squeals of joy from three rows in front of her.

It was the annual freshman class trip. It was March, but for some sick reason she blamed on human effects to the climate, it was still freezing cold in Canada. Maybe it was just because she was sensitive to temperature change. Either way, she knew she was going to be even bitterer than usual being stuck in the cold air for a week.

Tucker turned back around in his seat and yawned. He didn't know what Sam's problem was. It was a ski resort, what self-respecting teenager didn't want to go there? Skiing, that was a given, but also great dinners, warm fires, Canadian girls with the cutest accents….

Okay, maybe he should change that to any self-respecting teenage boy.

It was then that Tucker noticed Danny's leg bouncing up and down anxiously for the fifth time during the whole bus ride. He sighed and hit Danny's knee lightly to get his attention. The boy looked past his unkempt black hair and took out one of the earphones. "What?"

"You're doing that weird leg bounce thing again."

"I am?" he asked. He looked down and saw his leg's erratic movement. "Oh. I am." After taking a deep breath his leg stopped bouncing. "Sorry. I'm just –"

"Danny, a ghost dictator isn't going to appear in Amity and take over while you're away," he said comfortingly. "Okay?"

"Yeah, how do you know?"

"I don't. It's just that the chances are really, really slim."

"Right," Danny said. "I don't think the town's going to fall to pieces, but something could still happen with me gone. And it's not like there'll be any back-up, either, with Valerie on the trip, too."

Valerie's eyes popped open at the sound of her name. She was sitting opposite of the boys and two rows down, and had been trying to take a nap for the last hour now. The bumpy roads and sounds of Paullina's dreamy sighs were not helping, but hearing her name jolted her up.

"What about Valerie?" she asked loudly so the two could hear her.

Danny leaned over so quickly that he almost fell into the aisle. He caught himself though and pushed himself back up. "Oh, uh, nothing. We were just saying that you were trying to sleep… because I'm sleepy, too and it looked like a good idea."

"Keep trying, Fenton," she said, closing her eyes again. "Not the easiest thing."

"Please keep your conversations to your neighbors, Danny," Mr. Lancer called from the front of the bus. Danny leaned back in his seat and put his earphones back in.

That actually seemed like a good idea, Tucker thought. He was getting kind of tired from sitting down for so long. Soon enough, he was leaning against the icy window just as Sam was behind him, and drifting off into sleep…

* * *

At least, until his face crashed into the seat in front of him.

"Ow!" He yelped, pulling back and grabbing his glasses before they fell off. For a moment Tucker was too disoriented to do anything but grip his armrest and hold onto his nose, which felt like it was beginning to bleed. The first thing his brain registered was that is was dark outside, and there was a flashing red light. The bus was shaking violently, and nearly everyone in the bus was screaming bloody murder. So, what better idea than to join them?

"What the hell is going on?" Tucker yelled over the noises of screaming.

Danny was gripping the headrest of the seat in front of him for dear life, eyes shut tightly and jaw tightly closed to keep himself from biting his tongue. He turned to his best friend and looked at him wide-eyed, a strange look of helplessness and the worry that Tucker had seen many times before. It was understood without words what was happening to the bus.

"Stop the bus all-damn-ready!" Sam screeched from behind them. Her voice was loud, but it was drowned out by a large noise from without the bus. The bus jolted to the side again and her arm flew into the space between Danny and Tucker. Both of them grasped her hand tightly. It was then that Tucker finally realized the red lights weren't coming from within the bus.

"Can you do something?" Sam asked impatiently, her hair flying in all sorts of directions. She had several bruises already forming on her arms.

Danny looked around frantically, trying to figure something out. It would probably be a better idea to do so sooner than later. But what exactly was he going to do? Could he go ghost inside the bus without anyone noticing, since it was mass chaos within?

Suddenly, the bus grew quiet for a split second, and then everyone screamed at the same moment. Danny let go of his friends' hands and looked at the front of the bus. A few students from the front seats were starting to scramble into the back, so it was hard to make out what was happening. When he could make it out, Danny gasped.

The bus had driven off the side of the road, and they were about to hit a rock on the right side of the bus. Their side of the bus, no less.

Too late to leave the bus, Danny had to work from within. He gripped even tighter to the seat in front of him and concentrated. Quickly he turned into Danny Phantom and began working to make the whole bus intangible.

At the very last moment, it worked. Not the entire bus, but the half of it that mattered, phased through the rock. As soon as it passed, though, the lights on the inside of the bus flickered out and the engine stopped. Danny released his hands from the seat and quickly changed back into his human form before anyone could see. The bus slid some more across the ground before coming to a stop. It rocked to the left on its wheels, and the whole bus cried out collectively, before it rested back on both wheels.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, Danny leaned against the seat in front of him and panted heavily. Tucker wheezed next to him, holding his hat in front of his face to stem the blood flow. He could hear Sam moaning from behind, and several other people seemed to be nursing their own mild wounds. Danny closed his eyes, groaned, and fell to his knees in the small space between seats.

At last, someone spoke. "Is… is everyone okay?" Mr. Lancer called from the front of the bus.

"No!" Paullina said weakly. "I think I cut my leg. My ski outfit's stained with it."

Sam snorted in laughter. "Well, at least we know the universe hasn't completely flipped upside down," she muttered.

"Mr. Lancer," Valerie said, standing up from her seat boldly. She didn't seem very damaged, just a few scrapes. "We need to get everyone out of the bus."

"She's right," Danny agreed, standing up as well. Just not as strongly as Valerie had.

Mr. Lancer nodded in agreement and stood up as well. He turned to the bus driver, who exchanged a concerned look with their teacher, but then nodded as well. He pressed the button that opened the doors electrically, but nothing happened. After three more presses, the doors still didn't open. He tried turning on the lights and televisions, and even accessing the radio, but nothing at all seemed to work.

During this time, a few of the students, including Sam and Valerie, had gotten up to check for damages. So far no one needed anything more than a few bandages from the First Aid kit and some aspirin.

"Dash, Kwan, somebody," Mr. Lancer said, "start opening the emergency exists."

In a few minutes, everyone was outside in the cold night air, lying down or sitting in a large group. Sam was curled up in a ball, shivering, and Danny looked surly. Mr. Lancer was watching all of them, every last one, so Danny couldn't so a thing to figure out what had happened.

"You're pretty sure it was a ghost?" Tucker asked.

"Pretty sure," Danny said. "But I wonder who."

"Doesn't matter, just get me the heck back in a warm building," Sam complained.

Danny sighed at Sam's reaction and turned back to Tucker. "Nothing's working?"

Tucker frowned and tossed the cell phone in his hand to the ground. "No freaking service. And unless I find a plug soon, I'm not going to have any battery either. Man, this sucks!"

"The bus should have a radio, right?" asked a girl sitting next to them. "We can contact somebody on it."

"We'd better," Sam said darkly. She curled into a tighter ball. Danny shook his head at Sam and tossed her his jacket. He was half-ghost, so he was obviously used to feeling cold. She smiled softly in thanks, but wasn't sure if she could smile any more than that under the circumstances.

The bus driver walked out from the bus, shaking his head. He approached Mr. Lancer and said something quietly to him. Their teacher sighed and rubbed his balding head before turning to the students. "Class, I know most of us are still shaken up from the crazy ride –"

"We're who knows how far from the highway, or bus just went through hell, and half of us are freezing to death," Dash said loudly to his teacher. "My cell phone doesn't work and we're two hours from the resort."

"Dash Baxter, we may be stranded out here with a broken radio, but that doesn't mean I'm not still your superior," Lancer growled.

Sam sat up instantly and stared at their teacher. "Did you just say we're stranded out here and that the radio is _broken_?"

Lancer stared at her for a moment before realizing he'd slipped. "Yes, Miss Manson, we are." The group of teens started talking in a panic, but the teacher and a few other students quieted them down. "No one seems to have any service out here, the electricity is out in the bus and something's wrong with the engine. We don't know how long it'll take to fix the radio, but it is fixable. Now, first things first, we need to get everyone's stuff out of the bus. Dash, Kwan, Nick, and Danny, I want you to go back and pull out everyone's things."

Danny looked up in surprise that he'd been chosen to take out the suitcases with the star athletes of the freshman team. He nodded, exchanged a look with his friends, and got up to follow them to the bus.

It wasn't NASA, and they were stuck with what might be a ghost around them in the middle of the night, but at least this trip was becoming slightly more interesting.

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**_See you in the afterlife,_**

**_Saramis Kismet_**


	2. Exploration

**Broken Transmission**

_Holy shizzle, I'm actually updating something! I didn't even really want to do this story when I started it. Wasn't my idea. By the way, that contest is quote unquote over. I don't think anyone really won. But I'll continue it anyway, since it's a break from GO and MOM. Both of which I'm in a rut with. Also, WNE is hereby discontinued. I'll rewrite it again, maybe as a part of MOM. O.O

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**Exploration**

Since it was dark, Mr. Lancer and the bus driver had forbidden any late night exploring.

But of course, who really listens to Lancer?

Danny shrunk back behind a bush and glanced around. It was difficult to see if anyone was still awake. They had taken temporary refuge a few yards away from the bus after getting everyone's luggage off of the bus. They found a small clearing where the moonlight made the thin layer of snow glow blue. The bits of shrubbery dotting around them leading into a forest cast shadows over the smooth land. Most people had made makeshift beds, having to layer up all the clothes to use as blankets and their bags as pillows.A lot of themwere huddled in the center of the group to take advantage of the body heat, but a few spare classmates had stayed in their own private groups.

Could he risk illuminating the area with a ghost ray? He definitely didn't want to be spotted leaving the campsite, especially by the resident ghost-o-phobe. Plus, he really didn't want to trip over a rock again and land fact first into a pile of muddy snow.

"Danny?"

He jumped approximately a foot into the air at the whispered sound of his name. He'd been caught! Now he couldn't check the area for whatever it was that had driven their bus off the --

"Danny! Relax, it's me."

Danny inhaled deeply and sighed. "Sam," he replied quietly. "What are you doing out here?"

He heard the bush rustle a little as Sam crouched down next to him. "Trying to figure out what you're doing," she said. "What's the plan?"

"The plan," he answered, "is to do something. Anything at all."

Sam snorted but stopped herself. "In other words, you're just winging it."

"Basically." Danny turned his head back to see if anyone was sleeping nearby to hear him. They were mostly safe. "I would just go ghost or something, fly around, go intangible and slip right by under normal circumstances."

"Why aren't you?"

Danny pointed in the general direction of one slumbering figure. "Valerie. I have no idea what she's packing ever since Technus juiced her suit up." He shook his head feverishly to get the thoughts out of his mind of that failed relationship. This wasn't a time to feel sorry about anything.

"You think she might have something to detect ghostly activity?"

"Perceptive, aren't you?" he commented. He rubbed his hands together and though of what he was going to do. "Look. If I have to do this on foot for a little while, then it's probably better if I'm by myself."

There was a short silence before Sam replied to this bit of news. "Okay. If I see anyone leaving camp to follow you, I'll call you."

Danny stood up and began to tiptoe away. "How will you manage that?"

Sam blinked for a moment, then hit herself on the forehead. "Right. The cell phones are all dead." She stood up and reached out in the near darkness to find Danny's shoulder. "I'll stall them, then. Maybe get Tucker to pull out that mp3 player with all those disgusting sounds on it."

"Whatever works," Danny said before turned around and walking deeper into the forest.

He never did like the woods at night. After the incident at Vlad's house in the Rockies, every sound that was made while he had to stay human spooked him. It was Lancer coming to grab him, or the ghost coming to fight him, or Valerie coming to kill him, or a giant ghost mutant bear coming to eat him.

_Why couldn't it be NASA? Why couldn't we do what Danny wanted to do for once? _These thoughts ran through his mind as he made his way through the trees and brush that he could hardly see. Still he didn't feel completely safe going ghost. Not until he was a little further from where Valerie could detect him or the lights would be seen.

He felt like a complete chicken, too.

A few minutes later, Danny couldn't stand the forced disability. He paused and raised a fist, igniting it with a faint green glow. It definitely made it easier to see upcoming plants that he didn't want to inadvertently eat.

Soon, though, the light flickered out. He growled and glared at his fist. His powers never did work that well in human form. Only when he was angry could he use the ghost ray for a long time. He turned around to stumble back to camp.

Then, he heard the giggling.

He turned back around and raised his fists. Was it a student following him? Was it two students doing something he really didn't want to see? He didn't feel his ghost sense, but it was so God forsaken cold already.

The giggling came again, this time from in front of him. He peered down and saw the outline of what seemed to be a little boy, maybe six or seven. This startled him. He didn't seem to be a ghost. No glowing, no ghost sense going haywire. It was just a little kid that wasn't any taller than his waist.

He bent down and grinned. "Hey, fella," he said, reaching up to ruffle the boy's sandy blond hair. It was probably a good sign that there was a kid here. It meant that his family might be nearby. "Where did you come from? Is there a house nearby?"

The little boy grinned and giggled again, the sound high pitched and echoing. It sent the sensation of cold liquid going down Danny's throat.

He pulled his hand away and stared at the little kid as he giggled again. It definitely was not a human sound, but the boy looked so innocent in this dim lighting. "Hey, kid, are you okay?" he asked again.

"That was really fun," came a hissing, mischievous voice all around Danny. It was hard to make out just where it was from, but the boy was the only one near him. "It just kept sliding and sliding down the hill, so fast, and all the screaming. That was really fun. Did you think it was scary? Did you?"

Danny took a step back, now incredibly freaked out. He rubbed his eyes and snapped out of it. "Don't know what the heck you are, kid," he said, "but if you're the one who trashed our bus, then --"

A blinding light cut him off and distracted him from going ghost. He covered his eyes with his arm and heard the same hissing voice scream in pain. When the light died down, Danny looked up and let his eyes adjust to the newfound darkness.

"Are you okay?" asked the familiar voice of Valerie.

Danny stared at the shadowy figure in front of him for a moment before he could find his voice again. It had tightened up in the fear that Valerie had seen him when he was using his ghost ray. Before he answered, the light of a flashlight landed on his face and he couldn't see again.

"Danny?" she asked, her voice suddenly shrill. "What are you doing out here?" She seemed to shuffle something into her backpack. It was probably whatever weapon she'd used to make the little boy go away.

"Breaking the rules," he finally said, blinking in the light. "What about you?"

Valerie moved the flashlight around and took a few steps closer to Danny. "The same thing, I guess." She raised the light so that both of their faces were visible. Danny noticed that she seemed very uncomfortable. "So, you saw that… that thing? Did it do anything to you?"

"No. It creeped me out to no ends, but he… it didn't hurt me." He paused. "What was that you just did to it?"

"Oh! That?" Valerie was caught off guard by his observation. "Oh, um, it was something my dad let me use. From his lab. You know. I guess it, uh, came in handy." She was flushed, realizing that Danny had seen one of her ghost fighting weapons. It was the first time the human him had been exposed to the ghost fighting her.

"Yeah." Danny looked around, really not wanting to say anything. Right now, he just wanted to go to sleep. It had been a long night. The only problem with that goal was that the distractions had kept him from remembering how he had gotten there in the first place. "Do you know how to get back?"

As soon as he said this, a loud rustling sound came from his left. The two twisted their heads and Valerie moved the light to a spot on the ground. Sam and Tucker were both laying on their backs, staring up at them.

Tucker smiled and waved his fingers. "Hey, prison breakers. How's the view?"

"Sam? Tucker?" Valerie asked. "How did you guys find us?"

Sam opened her mouth to respond, but stopped before any words came out. She cocked her head to the side, still laying on the ground. "Well," she started slowly, "we noticed that Danny was missing, and saw you walking away. We figured that, um, you were going to look for him, too?"

Valerie furrowed her eyebrows suspiciously, but seemed to accept the excuse. "Any chance you two know the way back?"

Tucker sat up humming and looked back the way they'd come. "Mostly. We can follow our trail if you use that flashlight."

"Excellent," Danny said. "Come on, before someone _else _notices that we're missing." He lifted Tucker and Sam up from the ground.

The twoled the way, with Danny behind them, and Valerie trailing off a few feet. She rubbed her wrists worriedly and kept looking between Danny and her bag containing her weapons. The only thing running through her mind now was whather or not Danny had bought her excuse or not. If he hadn't, she'd have some trouble.

* * *

For the rest of the night, Danny, Sam, and Tucker huddled together in a separate space far enough away from the group so that their whispers wouldn't awaken them. They were arranged so the their heads were all next to each others and their bodies extended outward. 

"You mean some little ghost kid threw us off the road so far that we can't even find the highway anymore?" Tucker hissed angrily. Danny has just finished telling them the story of what had happened before Valerie appeared and shot the boy down.

"Basically," he replied. "It was so weird. I'm just glad that Valerie showed up _before_ I went ghost. I was about to." He rolled over in his makeshift bed and stared up at the night sky. "The kid didn't seem like any ghost I'd ever seen before, either."

"That's because it probably wasn't," Sam said. She raised her arm up and looked at her painted nails with mild interest. "It was probably a poltergeist."

"A poultry what now?" Tucker asked.

The word struck a memory in Danny's mind. "Poltergeist?"he asked, ignored Tucker's question. Unlike him, Danny actually knew the term. A poltergeist was more of a spirit than a ghost, according to what his parents had said once. They were restless beings who would make noise and break things to get attention. They could end up being very dangerous. Most of the time, though, they didn't know that what they were doing was harmful. They just did it because it was their nature. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, it didn't affect your ghost sense," Sam said, counting out the list on the fingers of her raised arm, "it was a little kid, and he asked you if you thought he was scary. Poltergeists are known to associate with children, and wanting to scare you is part of the attention complex, right?"

"How should I know?" Tucker asked anxiously. "No one's telling me what it is!"

"It's a problem," Danny answered. "That's all you need to know right now."

There was silence among them as Tucker crossed his arms over his chest in annoyance, Danny stared up at the stars with a frown, and Sam turned her head to look at him. It wasn't quite as difficult to see in the clearing. The starlight definitely helped her to see a bit better than usual. "Danny?" She elbowed him to capture his attention. "You seem a bit off. Why?"

"Well, I've never fought anything that wasn't a ghost before," he explained, his eyes locked on the night sky. "You think I could use the Fenton Thermos on it?"

"You brought one?"

"Of course I did," Danny replied. He yawned loudly, suddenly realizing how tired he was. "It's in my bag. It's kind of late, though." Finding his current position uncomfortable, he turned to the right, facing away from Sam. "Good night, Sam."

Sam gave a final look at Danny before turning over herself and wrapping her arms around herself. It had to be freezing. She was going to get hyperthermia or frostbite or something before they could get help. To think that she could be in a perfectly warm and concealed room right now instead of out here.

Before she closed her eyes, she saw a congregation of three people sitting up, one of them rubbing their leg. Straining her ears to listen, she caught some of their conversation.

"This hurts really bad. I know the bus driver bandaged it up, but it still hurts. I mean, I should be in a hospital or something."

"I know! This is terrible. You need medicine. And what are we going to eat? All I brought was energy bars."

"I'm not eating any rabbits, that's for sure! I could get rabies."

Sam rolled her eyes at Paullina and Star, but realized they had a point about one thing. Paullina's leg was sliced in the crash. She didn't get to see much of it -- sadly -- but it would probably be best for a doctor to look at it.

She'd worry about that once she had some coffee. At last, she let herself drift to sleep.

* * *

_Here's to me writing this fanfic off as a dud when I first posted it. Seriously, I thought it sucked. I guess otherwise -- dear friends have already credited it. Hope you all enjoy this part, as well!_

_Thanks Geck Osco for telling me about the problem. Fixed now._

**_See you in the afterlife,_**

**_Saramis A. Kismet_**


End file.
